Monkey Pale Ale by Monkey Mountain

March 21, 2020

Monkey Pale Ale is a 6% American Pale Ale from Monkey Mountain, based in Oita, in Kyushu, Japan. It’s part of both their bottled lineup and draft lineup, though both may be hard to find at the time of writing. Monkey Pale Ale uses “crystal malt and hops” but that’s all they have listed about their regular ingredients. The most interesting thing about Monkey Pale Ale is that it also uses locally sourced apples as part of the adjunct lineup – an interesting choice there but each to their own I guess?

Monkey Pale Ale Aroma and Taste

Monkey Pale Ale poured out a dark golden honey colour with a large amount of fluffy, sticky white head on top that clung to the side of the glass. If I hadn’t had read the bottle, I would have said that Monkey Pale Ale was off – the acetaldehyde aroma was a little off-putting, but knowing that Monkey Mountain had added apple to the beer made so much sense afterwards – almost as if someone had deliberately wanted their beer to come across as potentially being off. It was very unusual as the actual hoppy aroma was slightly dank with a hint of citrus bite to it. It’s just a shame that the apple aroma took away from it.

Monkey Pale Ale came out fighting with a hoppy bitter punch from the get-go, but settled down to some more of that green apple flavour combined with some of your typical American pale ale dankness. There was also a hint of grassiness to the beer, but that could have just been the apples playing with me. The malts brought a light caramel sweetness to Monkey Pale Ale once it had been given the chance to warm up, but not enough to become cloying. Once again, the apple flavour detracted away from the beer, which really did seem a shame as there was a nice base to Monkey Pale Ale, if you can get past it. When Monkey Pale Ale had warmed up, there was a slight alcohol heat to it, but that could have been my taste buds being angry with me for making them taste apples.